Phillipsburg resident Howard Miller told his mother he wanted to join the Army when he was 16. She wouldn’t let him go.

So, he dropped out of high school at age 17 and enlisted. Miller spent most of his days guarding trains that traveled through Berlin with two other military police officers. During the Berlin Airlift, the Soviets held up their train at a checkpoint in Marienborn for three days.

Honorably discharged from the Army, Miller still looked like a baby-faced teenager when the Korean War broke out in June 1950. Miller said people accused him of being a draft dodger, so he signed up for the Air Force that fall.

Sitting at his kitchen table last week, Miller recounted watching the Koreans go down to the river to beat and wash their clothes. He showed a picture of himself with Korean children as they watch jets take off. He laughed about the time he slipped and fell into a rice paddy.

And he remembered spending the night in a foxhole or garden and hearing a bugle blow, which indicated the North Koreans and Chinese were coming.

Miller spent a few months in Taegu, Korea, before he was shipped to Kimpo Air Force Base. He was part of a fighter-bomber wing, working with the Air Rescue to secure bases and guard the perimeter or bring bodies back when planes went down.

At one point, the Chinese took over Kimpo Air Base, and Miller took shrapnel in his leg. He survived and came home safely, with no lingering health effects. It’s been nearly six decades since the July 27 signing of the armistice to end the fighting in Korea, but Miller said not much has changed in North Korea.

“They just can’t be trusted,” he said. “Not at all.”

Reaching an agreement

The armistice was a ceasefire, not a formal treaty ending the war, according to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian.

The fighting began in June 1950, when the Soviet-backed government in the North crossed the demarcation line dividing Korea and attacked the U.S.-backed government in the South.

After three years and arguments over peace terms, representatives from the North, the People’s Republic of China and the United Nations signed the armistice, delineating the 38th parallel as the division between North and South Korea and establishing a demilitarized zone around the border, according to the State Department.

Ten service members from Warren County and seven service members from Hunterdon County were killed in the Korean War, according to a database provided by the National Archives. Fifty-two service members from Northampton County and 43 service members from Lehigh County were killed, according to the database.

Phillipsburg resident Gildo De Paolis thought he would be among those killed in action. The Chinese were all around as they delivered a heavy hit to forces at the Chosin Reservoir.

His binoculars gave him away.

They shot him first. Then they threw a “potato smasher” grenade. The bullet severed his tongue and shrapnel blew out his jugular vein. Convinced he was going to die, De Paolis said goodbye to his “mom and pop,” he said. But he survived.

De Paolis spent more than a year in the hospital and has had several reconstructive surgeries. Now 82, he still goes to the Veterans Affairs hospital, usually at least every three months.

He tells himself there’s nothing wrong with him, and remembers there are people worse off than him -- people who never came home.

He doesn’t consider himself anyone special.

“A serviceman’s a serviceman. They’re all doing their duties,” De Paolis said. “It just happened to be that I got shot up pretty bad. I’m thankful I’m alive.”

De Paolis left Phillipsburg High School after his junior year to join the U.S. Marine Corps and spent about two years on Guam, where he played All Star baseball. He was in the Special Service, so he wouldn’t have had to go to Korea, he said. He volunteered to go with his friend, who also survived the war.

The Korean War stopped Communists in their tracks, De Paolis said. Today, though, he prays for no more war and the safe return of servicemen and women from overseas.